Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It

Feb 3, 2019

“When I started, you had to do all of this manually,” said Sharon Morgan, founder of OurBlackAncestry.com. “You had to actually go to the place where your family came from and do the research in the courthouse.”

Now, many documents have been digitized and are readily available online. But what’s been documented certainly depends on the location or type of the documents. For instance, I can find baptism certificates from English churches in 1600, but I can’t find any documents from India. And on a smaller scale, one county may have their marriage licenses available, while another has yet to put any online.

If you’re descended from slaves, this is a particularly tricky battle. Because while you might be able to find your ancestors up until 1870, “prior to 1870, as you may know if you’ve done any research, we were not in the people records.